Inspiration

Protests and anxiety relief

by

Starting two weeks ago, I’ve been living in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, don’t know anyone, and really have no good reason to be.

And with my typical lack of planning or foresight, I managed to arrive at a time when there are anti-government protests going on day and night. I can hear them outside my window right now — horns, drums, whistles, cowbells, and a large mass of people chanting, “Resign!” in the local language.

I don’t mean to make it sound bad because it’s not. Mostly I’m having a great time here.

​​But, with the uncertainty and the language barrier and the constant cowbells, there are many moments when I get anxious. Out of nowhere, my brain will serve up scenarios of trouble, danger, and pain that could happen to me, all alone and unprotected in this great big world.

When those moments pop up, and they pop up often, I go back to a passage I read in Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics:

“You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell.”

Maltz is using the telephone as a metaphor (metonym?) for anxiety-causing events and thoughts. If you too get anxious thoughts now and soon after, maybe this metaphor will help you. Plus I’d like to add two things to what Maltz wrote.

First, you don’t have to feel guilty because the phone started to ring.

​​In other words, just because bad thoughts popped up in your head, this doesn’t make it more likely you will in fact experience trouble, danger, and pain. You can be plenty successful in life, even with a constantly ringing phone line.

Second, this is not some Deepak Chopra-ish claim that you can always be happy and healthy if you just set your mind to it.

​​If the phone rings while you’re napping, you will wake up. There’s no sense in pretending that you’re still asleep. But you can go to another room where the ringing isn’t as loud… or you can even put on some Brian Eno ambient music, to drown out the ringing until the damn thing shuts up.

Speaking of incessant rattling:

I write a daily email newsletter. Mostly it’s about marketing and copywriting, with occasional detours into self-help, like today. If you’d like to get this thing ringing in your inbox each day, click here to subscribe.

“A hell of a habit to get into and just about as hard to get out”

by

David Ogilvy, a stylish copywriter who started one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world, once wrote that, of the “six giants who invented modern advertising,” at least five were gluttons for work.

One of Ogilvy’s marketing giants was Claude Hopkins, who may have been the first A-list copywriter of all time.

​​A century ago, Hopkins amassed a fortune by writing profit-generating ads for big brands, many of which still survive today — Palmolive and Quaker Oats and Pepsodent.

He also wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which has become a kind of bible in the field. (According to Ogilvy, nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book at least seven times.)

Hopkins was certainly a glutton for work. He worked 16-hour days, every day, including Sundays — his “best working days, because there were no interruptions.”

Sounds horrendous, right? But here’s the thing that struck me about Claude Hopkins and his love of work. From his autobiography, My Life in Advertising:

“All the difference lay in a different idea of fun. […] So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable. What others call work I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we like best.”

In other words, work can become fun, if you work at it. Maybe you find that thought encouraging. I know I sometimes do.

Other times, though, all I remember is what Hemingway said about work: “It’s a hell of a habit to get into and it’s just about as hard to get out.”

So what’s my point? No point. It’s Sunday, after all, a day of rest for non-gluttons. Enjoy and relax. We’ll get back to points, well-made or not, tomorrow.

For more content like this, you might like my daily email newsletter.

Techno party inspiration

by

So I went to an elite techno party last night. I’m not a fan of techno or a fan of parties, but it was illuminating.

A techno party, I found out, is a bunch of white people, wearing sunglasses at night, stiffly feeling the beat, and furiously stomping the ground.

There was a local DJ who got things moving, and then the main act came on. The crowd — maybe around a thousand people — went wild. Since I am not a part of the techno world and I can’t understand the music at all, I found that incredible. And that’s what I want to share with you today.

Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are in the world right now. The fact is, whatever you do, however bizarre, there are people out there in every city of the world who will gladly line up, give you their money, and defer to your authority for a while.

Of course, I’m not just talking about techno or music. This same thing happens in marketing or any other business too.

People are looking for entertainment… for an authority… for somebody with a unique voice. That can be you.

I’m not saying it will be easy or immediate. But right now, all around the world, there are people who would love to became a part of your audience — if only you start writing, creating, or producing something.

Speaking of which:

I’ve got a daily email newsletter. It’s mainly about persuasion and marketing. Sometimes about techno. In case you’d like to try it out and see if it’s the kind of thing you want in your life for a few minutes each day, here’s where to sign up.

“He could never defeat the second-guessing”

by

Imagine for just a moment you are an MMA fighter, stepping into the octagon. The door locks behind you. Across from you is a guy who has been trained to kick your head clean off your shoulders.

Suddenly, the ref waves you both on. Your opponent starts to charge towards you, ready to kill.

And then, instead of feeling your own killer instinct taking over, you hear a voice in your head that says, “Oh God. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here. Everybody’s gonna see I shouldn’t be here.”

I’ve read various copywriters say they feel like a fraud or an impostor. You might think this fear is unique to this sensitive, snowflakey profession. But no. Even much tougher people get struck by the same panic.

For example, I watched a short clip today in which Chael Sonnen and Uriah Hall, two of the world’s best mixed martial artists, talk about self-doubt and lack of confidence.

Sonnen, the more experienced of the two, has this to say:

“One of the huge things I realized is that everybody’s going through it. I used to think there’s something wrong with me. I used to be really embarrassed about it. And I talked to Randy Couture [a legendary MMA fighter] about it. And Randy said that the one thing he learned is, he could never defeat it. He could never defeat the second-guessing or the negative voice in his head. And he just learned, I just gotta compete with it.”​

Here’s my point:​​

It’s worthwhile looking at your inner demons now and then, and putting in some work to cast them out. Maybe you will be successful in your exorcism one day. But don’t count on it.

The good news is, it’s possible to be plenty successful even with a lot of self-doubt. Others have done it before you. You can too.

You just have to accept that the “I can’t do this” demon will probably continue to sit on your shoulder, whispering panic-inducing thoughts to you, while you act regardless.

“Yes, you’re right,” you can tell him. “I can’t do this. Just give me a second. I need to punch this guy in the face.”

Here’s another demon you might hear whispering to you:

At first you think he’s saying, “Email newsletter.” So you lean in closer.

The demon says, “A new email each day, about persuasion and marketing.”

You lean in still closer. Suddenly, the demon grabs you by the ear. “Sign up here,” he whispers.

How to build up immunity to writing huge amounts of copy

by

June 22, 1941, exactly 79 years ago, saw the start of the largest military operation in history, code name Barbarossa. 3 million Third Reich soldiers and 600,000 Third Reich horses headed east and invaded Russia.

In spite of all that man and horse, it didn’t work out well for the Germans.

No surprise there. Just another instance of the most famous of the classic blunders of history:

“Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

That line comes from a scene in The Princess Bride (book or movie), in which the Dread Pirate Roberts wins a deadly battle of wits.

He wins because he has spent the past few years building up an immunity to iocaine pwder, a colorless, odorless, instantly dissolving poison.

Which brings me to the inspirational pitch I want to make to you today:

It’s incredible what you can get used to, if you only start small enough and then build up.

Take for example, writing.

I started writing emails regularly about three years ago, At first, I did it only twice a week, and for another of my sites.

I then bumped up the frequency to three times a week. And then every day.

As of today, I’ve written 500+ emails for this list alone, and that’s in addition to hundreds (or thousands) of other emails I’ve written for clients, including several daily email lists I’ve worked on and continue to work on.

I would never have been able to put out this amount of content each day when I first started. But over the course of a few years, I slowly built up an immunity to it.

And so can you. If you get started now. And if you’re motivated enough to survive the deadly battle of wits that is the freelance copywriting marketplace.

But maybe you’re confused. I’ve referred several times to emails but this is a blog post. But it started out as an email, and as part of my daily email newsletter. If you’re interested, you can sign up for it here.

Inspiration for would-be New Professors

by

Last Thursday morning, I read an article about a man who set an unusual world record.

Between December 2018 and August 2019, he traveled around the world by boat one-and-a-half times.

And in each of the world’s five oceans, including at Antarctica and somewhere close to the North Pole, he visited the deepest underwater point, in what are called “hadal” regions.

In order to become the first person to do this, Victor Vescovo, for that is the man’s name, had to build a custom-made submarine.

He had to retrofit a big ole ship, which he had bought from the U.S. Navy.

He had to hire a crew of engineers, scientists and support staff, all there to help him in his record-setting quest.

The whole enterprise cost a little less than $48 million, which Vescovo, who made that much and more in private equity, paid himself.

But don’t think this was a foolish waste of a rich man’s money.

According to the article, the U.S Navy has showed interest in buying Vescovo’s innovative submarine + blueprints, for a little over what Vescovo himself paid to develop and test it.

In other words, there’s a good chance that Vescovo will have somebody else foot the bill for his unique and quirky passion project of the past several years.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds pretty romantic to me. It’s the kind of life I would like to live.

Not that I’m interested in exploring ocean depths, or managing a big crew, or setting world records.

But I like the idea of having a sailboat of one, sailing to an unexplored island when the mood strikes me, writing up what I’ve learned along the way, and having others pay me to live this life.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a real sailboat or real islands.

It could just be an unusual topic I get interested in and start researching. Kind of like being a tenured professor, but without the years of clawing up the academic hierarchy.

So why am I telling you this?

No reason. Odds are, you don’t share this same dream.

But on the small chance that you do, then I want to tell you there’s hope.

I was talking to fellow copywriter Will Ward about this idea today.

And Will pointed me to the blog of Gretchen McCulloch, someone who is very much living a life like this. Gretchen has even written up a series of posts about how she became one of The New Professors (my term, not hers), and perhaps, how you can too.

I’m reading these blog posts right now. It’s good for inspiration and maybe a bit of guidance. If you want to read them too and be inspired, here’s where to get started:

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/189045267597/part-i-what-is-a-weird-internet-career

Worrying about unpredictable disasters at 3am at night

by

I was lying awake in bed at 3am last night as thunderous winds pummeled my window.

Hurricane-level gusts tumbled down the mountain that stands above the house I’m staying in. When they hit the shutters, it sounded like a kid with very full lungs blowing a whistle.

I couldn’t sleep from the noise. The only thing I could think to do is turn on the lights and start researching this wind, which in Croatian is called bura.

So let me tell you a couple interesting bura facts:

In 2012, a particularly bad bura made the Adriatic sea freeze. The bura ripped trees from the soil and threw fish out of the water. Waves got as big as 7 meters.

Many islands in Croatia are completely barren on their landward side. The reason is the bura, which strips away soil and covers everything in a salty mist.

To slow down the onslaughts of bura, most towns on the eastern Adriatic have narrow, labyrinth-like streets. In some towns, houses have stone roofs, because the bura rips tiles away. In Trieste, they sometimes stretch chains or ropes around town to help people steady themselves when the bura hits.

But let me wrap this up:

Not long ago, I read a book that compared fortune to a natural disaster. That book used a flood as metaphor, but I think a bura would work too. When it hits, nothing stands in its way. Trees are ripped up. Buildings are ruined. Fish go flying.

I used to think it made no sense to worry about unpredictable events. But the natural disaster metaphor changed my mind.

Because when the weather is more or less calm, you can put a stone roof on your house. Or install some ropes to steady yourself. Or even think about the layout of your town.

Maybe this is getting too poetic. My point is simply that there are things under your control, even in the face of fickle fortune. You can build up your skills, your assets, and your relationships. This is the best insurance to help you survive a disaster… and maybe even come out ahead when the wind dies down.

On the topic of building up your skills:

If you want some help building up your copywriting skills, my daily email newsletter can be a help. You can subscribe to it by clicking here.

“WILL YOU BE LEFT BEHIND?”

by

In a moment of idleness today I clicked on an email from Stansberry Research. It took me to a VSL with a big headline that reads:

“WILL YOU BE LEFT BEHIND?”

Behind the video, there is a shadowy photo of what looks like people being corralled into a concentration camp. And then Porter Stansberry starts to speak in a monotone voice:

“In regular places all across America, the lights are going out. And no, I don’t mean streetlights.”

I didn’t watch past the first few minutes. I am not in the Stansberry target audience, and it didn’t much move me. But something similar did move me a while back.

A while back, copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email with the subject line “If you want to be a poor, no-name copywriter, don’t read this.” It was about the consolidation Dan saw in the direct response industry. Here’s a part of that email:

“If you’re a copywriter that can produce actual results in that cold traffic, consolidated arena, you’ll have it made. If not, you’re going to be one of the writers fighting for the scraps.”

Really, this is very similar to the Stansberry promotion. It’s a prediction about the future, with the overarching message:

“Some will get left behind, while others will thrive — and it’s your choice which group you end up in.”

I don’t bring this up to talk about the future — of copywriters or of pensioners. Instead, I bring it up to talk about inspiration.

I used to think I cannot write inspirational copy.

After all, I’m such a cold, unenthusiastic fish. How can I possibly motivate others when I can’t even motivate myself?

But then I realized inspirational copy has its own predictable templates. Some are familiar — Frodo goes to Mordor and keeps pushing when the ring gets real heavy.

But there are other inspirational templates as well.

The way to find them is simply to watch your own cold heart. If it starts to twitch with a bit of life, you might have just read something inspirational. So take note of it, and see how you were influenced.

That’s how I singled out that Dan Ferrari email, which reincarnated into the Stansberry promo. And which, if you’re a student of copywriting who’s always looking to improve, you can find here:

https://orders.stansberryresearch.com/?cid=MKT421756&eid=MKT460923